The Vital Tethers--July 11, 2023

The Vital Tethers--July 11, 2023

[Jesus said:] "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” [Matthew 11:29-30]

Bob Dylan was right: "You gotta serve someone."  There's no way around it in this life--we will dedicate our lives to something or another.  We will give our hours and our energy to some cause, some person, some pursuit, or some combination of all of those things.  But there's no option in this world where you don't spend your life somehow.  There is no way of getting through life without bearing some burden, and without serving... someone.  It really just turns out to be a question of what is worth shouldering, and who is worth hitching our fates to.

Jesus is at least honest with us about that much.  You'll note that he doesn't say, "Come to me, because there are no yokes at all when you sign on the dotted line with me!"  He doesn't say, "There are no burdens at all in life when you join Team Jesus!"  That is to say, he doesn't lie to us.  Plenty of voices in our day and time do, however, and promise us that there is a life out there to be found where no burdens exist and no one can tether you down with obligations, responsibilities, or requirements to share someone else's load.  They often use the language of "freedom" to make their sales pitch, and they tell you that nobody can expect or require you to be bound to the needs of anybody else.  But of course, being disconnected from everybody turns out to be its own burden, too--like the Eagles sang, "Freedom? That's just some people talkin'--your prison is wand'ring through this world all alone."

Again, what Jesus has to offer is not a life free of all attachments, or free of the call to share the struggles and sufferings of others, but a life in which certain burdens can be let go of, so that we are able to carry the ones that truly matter.  I think that, in a nutshell, is what the Christian life really is: it is the lifelong training in learning what things we can let go of in order to be able to pull the weight of the vital tethers of love.  And Jesus is clear: he hasn't come to remove every tether on us, but to untie, untangle, and sever the ones that unnecessarily weigh us down.  Jesus insists, however, on leaving us bound to the love of God and the love of neighbor (who turns out to be everyone--yes, everyone).  But even though that sounds like we are being set up to be pulled apart in every direction (if I am tethered by love to each of the eight billion or so other neighbors with whom I share the planet at any given moment), it actually gives remarkable clarity. There are an awful lot of things I don't have to carry, don't have to be weighed down by, and don't have to stay leashed to any longer.

In fact, a great deal of what Jesus does in the Gospels is to go around with a pocketknife cutting ties and slashing tethers that hold people back from being able to love God and neighbor.  He undoes the knots that tether people to their religious guilt.  He cuts away the shame that others have piled onto the backs of people deemed "unworthy."  He removes the baggage of racial prejudice and old ethnic hatreds. He releases people from the impossible expectations of rule-following Respectable Religious Leaders.  He unties the bonds that hold people to their obsessions with their stuff, their money, their status, and their need for power and control.  And once you're released from those burdens, you find you really are free to move in the direction that matters--in the direction of love for God, and love for neighbor.  As Dietrich Bonhoeffer once preached, "God's love frees us from ourselves to be free for others.  To be free means nothing else than to be in this love, and to be in this love means nothing else than to be in God's truth."  That's what Jesus makes possible: a release from all that doesn't really matter (even if they were things that other religious people told me I had to carry, and even if I had been dragging them around for a very long time), and the clarity I find in only having to move in the direction of love.  Against every other obligation, restraint, and tie, Jesus is ruthless in cutting the tethers away, so that at last I can move freely--in the direction where he leads us, which is always the direction of love.

I wonder what it would to do our priorities if we actually let Jesus cut away the unnecessary ties we've been tangled up in.  If I were no longer worried about what anybody else thinks of me, I would be free to share table and offer welcome to the people others deemed "unacceptable" and "unworthy."  If I realized that my worth was not bound to the rise and fall of the Dow Jones or the worth of my 401(k)--and that it never had been!--I might be a lot less stingy about my resources and a lot freer to share.  If I was not bound to propping up a political party's agenda or backing my candidate at all costs, I would actually be free to speak up and <gasp> offer critique of where its platform needed correction or wasn't just or compassionate, and I would be free to see, and acknowledge, the flaws and failures of the public figures everyone else is cheering for without a second thought.  And if I was released from the need to seem "strong" or "powerful" or "great" in anybody else's eyes, I would probably be a lot less defensive, a lot less hostile, and a lot less insecure.  All of that sounds like freedom, and yet all of that opens the door for me to love others more fully.

That's the invitation in this day: to let Jesus cut away the tethers that keep us from love, and to allow him to sever the yokes to burdens that were unnecessary (even the religious ones), so that we are freed in every step forward to move in the direction of love.

Where will that take us today?

Lord Jesus, unleash us from all that has held us back and held us down, so that we will be free to move in the way of your love.